Sang incisively exposes how romance has been weaponized as a privatized escape from capitalist exhaustion, effectively marginalizing those who exist outside the nuclear norm. The video serves as a necessary critique of how we substitute systemic social support with the fragile promise of romantic fulfillment.
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We obsess over romance hoping it will save us from capitalismAdded:
Yeah, I want to start it right here.
This is a Tumblr post that u is one of numerous things that my creative partner and uh life partner shared with me.
>> Big ups >> for this topic. Big ups, right? Big upsell. Um this is a Tumblr post that went super viral a while back. No offense, but I think a lot of us, me included, don't actually want romantic love as badly as we think and really are just lonely and crave a closeness and intimacy that feels out of reach in friendships because of society's emphasis on marriage and the nuclear family. So, we project that into the never-ending search for a perfect love and a soulmate when really all we all just want to mean something to some foreign thoughts.
>> Oh, yeah. No, I this it it sings to me.
I've said a lot of the times that we put a lot of onus and emphasis on romantic partnerships and to the dismay of any other arrangement of coupling that could exist. That includes friendship. That's actually one of my favorite uh my favorite references in regards to this because even from a selfish point in regards to your relationship, your romantic relationship, you actually don't want your partner to be the be all and end all of everything inside your life. You don't want it that when you come home from work, you lay everything at the feet of your partner and then now they have to do the emotional labor after they've been doing labor probably intensively for remuneration in order to live. You don't want to put your partner through that. And actually that strain is one of the reasons why a lot of romantic relationships end up not fulfilling. And ultimately, you know, I'm not saying that a relationship ending is a failure of relationship.
Actually, I think that sometimes that is a healthy maturation and logical conclusion of a relationship. And not even conclusion, but I would say like a transformation. Like it turns into something else afterwards. You know, after a romantic relationship ends, it could be something else. Going back to like the idea of friendship, if you're able to spread the needs and wants of a person across community. So maybe your romantic partnership is also very efficient for your home life. Maybe if you rare children, you want that to be the case with your romantic partner. Go for it. And as a child or having a child, there are particular things and relationships that that child's going to have with people outside of their parents, that actually is extremely helpful and very necessary to their development. They're not going to want to come to you with everything and they shouldn't. Um, you need to have safe people around you and a community around you, a village, in order to actually develop that child in a way that is conducive to living in a community. But because we put a lot of emphasis on romantic relationships, uh that being a product of of course patriarchy because >> um this heteronormative perspective towards relationships, romantic partnerships uh also reinforces monogamy apart with also religiosity. This is going everywhere. But like >> like this this um patriarchy is reinforced through religion to create monogamy in this way where a man now has property of a woman because initially in many different setups that is what marriage was a contractual agreement of property. Um the man owned and was responsible for that woman. So that is not only of course a demeaning, misogynist and patriarchal standpoint but also a very isolating one cuz then therefore that not only the woman doesn't have any uh access to a community outside of it because it could be seen as adultery. Uh but also now the man has limited himself to this nuclear family uh that limits the reach of which they can have.
>> Right? I think that what we end up doing is that we put so much strain on our romantic partnerships that could be more efficiently spread across community in general.
>> Yeah, this is 100% a lot of what we're going to get at today. And the reason there is so many places you went is because it is connected to so many things. But in particular, I want to start by talking about singularism and the ways in which we view a person being single in society and how that's connected to not just general social conventions about romance, but the economic system underlying it and the way that that's tied in with the social.
I want to talk today about compulsory romance. Uh, as a followup to the most recent video that I did about asexuality, we're going to get into more asexual and a-romantic theory more so on the latter today. And I I want to thank everybody too for the the the positive response that the asexuality video received. The purpose of that video was to talk about not just our ace friends and talk about inclusion and talk about LGBTQA plus people IA plus people but to talk about how the ways in which they are marginalized tell us a lot about the ways that all of us are imprisoned in the system. And it's a similar thing for any type of querness and for any type of marginalization. You can first start by being more open-minded and inclusive of people. But to really understand the project of liberation and to really understand not just how to be there for ace people, but to be there for yourself, you've got to understand what it is that system is that causes this animosity to exist in the first place and how that animosity is actually something that affects all of us. It's just that a lot of us have an easier time or choose to fit in better. And with asexuality, we talked about like hypersexualization and we talked about hypersexuality as produced in media and we talked about the normalization of sexually abusive encounters and rape culture. Today I want to draw into the topic of romance because I've noticed something late.
I've noticed and I've wondered if other people have felt the same way that romance is for people a type of escape from capitalism. It's a way that under this system where we're all stressed, we're all working too hard, we're all trying to constantly upgrade ourselves and upgrade our surroundings and make ourselves feel worthy of something more than the labor that we're stuck to. In order to avoid that sense of being uh stuck as a rat in the system, we are given by the system one way out and that is find a partner, a romantic partner who loves you, who has the exact correct amount of sex with you, who is the exact proper amount of attracted to you in the proper ways for the proper qualities and then have a nuclear family that you form with them and raise children with. All of that is, you know, in the patriarchal standpoint, especially the way in which the male worker builds his own agency, builds his own little kingdom as he continues to be a peasant. But it's also just for every single person for the, you know, woman or the person who is socialized as a woman. It is seen as a marker of your worth in society. That you are attractive enough to gain a romantic partner who is valuable within that system and that you maintain your relationship with him. That you're a good partner with him and that you then raise the little village. It is a powerful tool of capitalism. and all this emphasis that we place on dating shows and all this obsession that you can kind of see with love and romance and being chosen. All that I think connects to this um >> with with what you're saying to build off of it real quickly before ADHD takes me down another backway alley and beats it out of me. I fashion it as like romantic capitalism like the economy of desiraability. I was talking about this in regards to uh male centrism when another creator who was a devout an out man hater uh in so far as like every other video was in reference to why she doesn't trust men. Uh the creator was um by the name of MJ Gray. Don't send hate but MJ Gray. Um, and she built this career as a white uh progressive in aesthetic uh uh woman whose whole shtick on Tik Tok and everywhere else was trying to educate uh women to not be not get tethered to a man, not get married to a man. Uh she herself said that she would never like to get married. Um and then a few months later she she also criticized uh other women for getting married. Um, and then a few months later, uh, she made a TikTok where she was announcing her engagement, uh, to a rich, wealthy man. And of course, the dissonance in it, uh, was obvious. Um, and the reason why I made the claim that it isn't too confusing to me, uh, apart from the fact that a lot of the things that she was spitting was basically what, you know, a lot of marginalized people would be talking about, you know, intersectional feminism. Uh but it wasn't very surprising to me that she would end up in a monogous marriage uh type of scenario because male centrism whether you know you hate them or you're all about them always talking about like a romantic partner or the possibility of a romantic partner or you are constantly loathing about the lack of dating options the lack of men where are the good men who's going to be the boys all of these different things. Um when we talk about dentering men uh in this uh discussion, it's still very much centered around men and that still ends up in a situation where we are looking at men as a means uh to fulfill desiraability uh to fulfill these different to to tick particular boxes in the criterion of commodification of romance. And when you were talking about is romance just another escape of capitalism, you're dead right. In fact, that's one of the reasons why a lot of romance ends up not working and not being satisfying is because people are looking to romance to create this high or this inebriation to be narcosed like you would any other drug when to have a partner or to couple with someone or to more importantly love someone not even romantically but to love someone is labor. uh to love someone is to um at the expense of your own self nourish someone else. Uh and that could be very paradoxical at times because one would wonder if you love yourself, if you're sacrificing your own environment and making sure that the climate is just right and the temperature is good and your biome is all healthy, how can I do that if I am constantly sacrificing myself for someone else? um those things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but because you are trying to ascribe or fit your partnership in this box that we've created or more so that we've inherited via romantic capitalism, via Dear John's, via love and basketball, via all of these different forms of media, but more importantly beyond that, via these institutions that were not made for a lot of us in mind. Actually, not even white people actually. You two like probably will not get the type of, you know, father being the patriarch of the household, woman with uh an apron on, barefoot inside the kitchen, pregnant, making you uh some gelatinous meal, putting it on a table, dog playing with the kid. You're you're probably not going to get that. You could barely afford a house right now, right? Um and I'm talking about white people, too. And I feel for y'all sometimes too because like a lot of the time like people will say, "Damn, if you white and also impoverished, if you also broke and white, then that means like you you double failed, right?" Um but the truth is what that criticism while funny, what it misses is that it's a class thing too. It it is it is very much inextric um inextricable um from class. And romantic capitalism is another instance of a glaring reminder that you aren't able to really occupy those spaces inside this institution that was not made for you in the first place.
>> Yeah, glass is a really fascinating way to look at it. We've talked in this on this channel before about Sylvia Federichi's book um the Caliban and the witch. Caliban and the Witch and the ways in which patriarchy develops and reasserts itself as part of a a way to assert, you know, assert capitalist norms as a way to to to sort of assert the norm of the woman's body being able to be controlled so that she can reproduce workers under capitalism. I think a great way to start the conversation about singleness and what single people go through is also looking at it as a class issue. And I will I want to start here actually with this video uh from Tik Tok from a content creator named Maine Liam.
>> You are single and you feel like your life is harder and also more expensive because you are single. I just want to take a second to validate the heck out of you for that because it's the truth.
And I feel so gaslit by people in relationships so often whenever I talk about stuff like this. Usually it's one of two archetypes of people. either people who are in relationships that aren't good and they are projecting that they like wish they were single and so whenever a single person says anything they're like it's not all it's cracked up to be or the people who are in relationships but who never had to exist for an extended period of time in adulthood as a single person like people who went from their parents house to college to maybe living with a roommate for a year or two to moving in with their partner and they never had this extended amount of time that they were completely on their own living alone paying all on bills like responsible fully for themselves and so they just don't know what they're talking about. I feel gas lit by them so frequently and I just want to say that if you feel your life is harder because you are single, it's because it is. It's because our society is not set up for you to be single long term in adulthood. Our systems and structures don't operate that way. Our tax code certainly doesn't operate that way. Are you kidding me?
our health care system. Nothing nothing is set up to support you in this single life.
>> I'm gonna start stop it there. There's a lot of places to go from it, right? And and and there's other Tik Toks in fact that I'll actually be interested in showing, but I feel like this is a really important way to categorize why it is that a lot of people complain about being single. In fact, a lot of the things that a lot of the things that it comes down to um are lived experiences of people who will often say things like, "I want to be somebody's number one thing. I want to be the most important person in somebody's life. I I you know, people who have relayed experiences of being in medical emergencies and having nobody who stays over them with stays over with them for the night and people who have been in long-term relationships who are married not understanding that or not seeing that. So, it can sometimes feel as though the single person is romance-c centered just because they're brainwashed in some sort of way. Um, because they're like, I want to be chosen, right? I want to be somebody's number one thing. And in some ways, there is a level of brainwashing going on that a person will view themselves as less valuable or as there being something wrong with them because they haven't been chosen, because they're not in a long-term relationship, view themselves as incomplete. At the same time, that's not just something that emerges from, you know, the ideas.
That's something that has material reality that is specifically structured in a way that oppresses people who are ace and a-romantic because those are people who have already said like I've come to the conclusion that I'm actually not that into dating or I'm not that into having sex or whatever combination of those things on whatever spectrum and that's a bold thing and it takes a lot of uh pain and work to to to come to that realization in part because it would be so much more advantageous to not admit to to not be that way or not feel you're that way. It would be so much more advantageous to continue to try to play the game of desiraability because desiraability is what gets you in the game for capital, right? I'll show this other Tik Tok really quickly.
Then I want to ask you sort of your thoughts and there's some news stuff that we can get into with regards to that too. But this is Paris Weno talking about seeing somebody go through the the pains of what people are terming chronic singleness, right?
>> I just saw such a fascinating video of this woman being like, I don't really understand why I'm single. like I'm the whole package. I am attractive and I like can mount the TV and I'm really smart and I like have all these qualities going for me. And she like literally spends like a like solid minute of this video like talking about all other qualities which Red are phenomenal quality. But she was like I just don't really understand why I'm single. Which like fair point I'm with her up until this point. But then she just starts being like I'm just shocked that there are people out there who like when they see my name on their phone when they see me text them they're not like stopping everything that they're doing to text me back. And then she was like there is no way that there is somebody else in the phone that is like better than me that's more interesting than me. And then she goes on this whole like siloquy about how like she truly like kind of regards herself as like a rare breed. Like there's no way that you're going to find somebody who was like of her caliber. And it was fascinating listening to this because I didn't know that there were people who like genuinely have a thought process if they were like better than the vast majority of the people available in the dating market. Cuz the way I've always regarded it is people have what they want and you could be perfect in your eyes but if you're not what they want then you're not going to ever be perfect which to me is actually more comforting because it means that like somebody there is somebody out there who thinks you are perfect. But it's also making me think about how like the loneliness crisis, the singleness crisis happening amongst our generation. It's making people genuinely insane. It's making people be like, "Why am I single? Why am I single? Why am I single?" And it's like not because there's anything wrong with you. So then you just end up getting this whole like inflated ego about like the world is out to get me.
And like this really ends up leading to like fems and ideology.
>> I I feel like I'll stop it there, but I feel like there's interesting correlations. Although I wouldn't have used used some of the wording that she used, but there's interesting correlations in terms of what you just talked about with pink pill female content and male centeredness. Also other conversations about do you split the bill 5050? Is he really the man for you if he's bisexual? You know, these kinds of weird Tik Tok discourses. And also the fact we're in these massive economic crisis where people are struggling to pay the bills and people are also struggling to feel as if they are safe in general in a social and e economic sense, you know.
>> Yeah, that is that's that's a really good point. I mean just what was that two weeks ago? Um you had backto-back black femicide councilman Fairfax uh killed his his wife um Dr. Fairfax uh because he she was divorcing him. Uh you of course had familiaride which is rare um relatively speaking. Um black familiaride also more rare uh in Louisiana in Sherport where a father after seemingly having a fine Easter with all of his kids as he so bragged online then took in hand to end their lives. So I have to address the nuance of advocating for love, a transformative property, what I deem to be God itself, and the sacrifices necessary to love.
Especially when I try to say that especially to women uh women and fem presenting folks who have the disposition of loving their apex predator. You know, you are in this dynamic where the person most responsible for your death, if not, you know, uh, nature, it is man. And you have to love them too. Uh, because they're your brothers, they're your fathers. Uh, but if you're cishat or if you're head, yeah, cishat too. Um, then they're your partner and you have to share life with them. And I'm asking you to love them. At the same time, be extremely conscious and cautious of the fact that they are most likely going most the most likely person to kill you.
And that's tough because of course the opposite is a loveless world where you resign not out of choice but out of fear. That's not good.
>> And you get this hostility. uh I call these pink cell forms and the pink cell groups uh and to take it a step further, the 4B movement and whatnot, which again I understand, but at the same time, a lot of these different movements have a lot of exclusionary practices that, you know, I would not fullthroatedly suggest everyone get involved with for those very reasons. Um, especially when you get into the radical stuff, uh, you begin to realize that some women are more equal than others in these cases, when you get to these movements. But a lot of what she's saying definitely resonates with me. There's there's a literally a single there's a single tax.
You know, the the world is not designed for single people. It is designed, of course, if we keep in mind that marriage mostly started out as a business for the most part. Uh you had kings of municipalities marrying off their daughters to other kings of municipalities, sons and >> merging wealth. Uh it >> tribes. Yeah. Within a lot of tribal formations. Yeah. Bridal wealth. Yeah.
>> It has mostly been not everywhere but has mostly been a product of uh business union and efficacy and capitalism specifically. Uh so when you see how that has metriculated from prehistory to now uh you realize that a lot of these institutions a lot of these policies and these practices and customs have created an enimical environment for people to be single. I know very well and I mean women and feminism in the chat like yall let me know. I know how isolating of an experience it must be for my cousins, my my female cousins. As soon as they hit around 22, 23, everybody is just starting to vi on your womb, you know, they're just like like putting your womb up for auction, you know, putting your your finger your your ring finger up for auction, you know, regularly. If you just happen to be single and a woman after the age at 23, more than likely you will have your family members saying, "I can find a good man for you."
Especially in the Caribbean, "Oh, I can find a good man for you. Hey, this is my cousin. You want her?" It it's a very demeaning experience, especially if you don't have any say in the matter. Like if what are you what if you don't want to be >> you know like what if I chemically for some reason have been endowed with the chemicals that have me in this predelection for not wanting to be around people uh much. Now you have compulsive or heteronormativity and compulsive uh uh coupling in this case where you got to be with someone now and you don't really want to. You would have been fine without them but now I got to share space. God forbid I have to have a child for them and now I'm risking my lives all because of this archaic idea of you know union that wasn't necessarily predicated upon what we deem it to be which is love now um for the majority of the time and then it brings us to a very uncomfortable question for anybody that is coupled is just like especially progressives for you know inside uh inside the stream right now um could you couple ethic um ethically knowing what we know Um, I'm I'm Ceette.
Um, and I am married. I have a kid. And these are difficult conversations and ruminations that I had to have in order to reconcile with the reality of not only what I'm choosing for family and the way that I'm engaged with because the more that you buy into these systems, the more that they take from you. So the more that you resemble that nuclear family, the more people are going to expect you to act that way and to present that way. So as a dad, like it's expected that I present as dad >> and that also means not being hot and I rebuke that.
>> No, I can have my shirt off and go to the beach and that be fine. No, I can wear short shorts, ooie daddies, if you will. It is hot and I live in the Caribbean. I I will not cease to be who I am because I've now hit these qualifiers of what you deem to be dad now. But because you are that, you then have people projecting on the rest of they're filling in your sentences for you. So like, okay, dad, and therefore everything else after that. Okay. Um, wife, that means that you have to have a child soon. And after you have the first child, you have to have the next child before you even really, you know, finish with postpartum. And then after that, you got to get a house because now you got to put them in something. And after you get a house, like you got, you know, so like before you know it, you're you're living your life for something else.
>> Yes. Which is the thing, right? I mean, that's what societies are formulated on.
These things are based off of social rules and those social rules evolve over time. That's why you see, you know, institutions of marriage and and trading the wife, the wife and like different traditions around that that are often like stigmatized in certain ways that can be overly u damning of like you know ancient indigenous peoples that like do not give as much credit to for instance indigenous women of those eras for their creativity in handling that for how much you know how much you know this sometimes there is a perspective that we have like we're so advanced now um and like one of the greater points is that like what we have now is just a new version of a lot of these things that is specifically tailored towards a global capitalist system. It's specifically tailored towards our alienation under a system. Our submitting of our time, our energy, our bodies, our labor, our minds towards producing profit. And because of that, these systems that tend to develop in societies are now organized in this particular way of okay, well, in this in our societies, you marry, you make sure you have kids, you make sure you know the money should go a specific way, the mother should stay more so in the house.
All these things that you hear MAGA sort of echo are the underlying undercurrents of a system that is currently in a bit of a flux as it goes through international crisis. Right? And I want to get back to the topic of singalism just because I do feel like I'm not saying you can you can >> No, I will take it. No, I will though.
But like please keep going.
>> But like I wanted to go back, you know, in the spirit of talking about ace exclusion and ace theory. You know, in the last video we talked about asexuality and ace theory from Shironda J. Brown and their book refusing compulsory sexuality. Um and and we have some more quotes from Brown about singularism. um which they describe as prejudice against single people in which singles are discriminated against by both partnered people and social institutions including the workplace, housing, and healthcare. And how singleism and aphobia often overlap because asexuals are more likely to be single than alosexuals. That that can look like unpartnered people being stereotyped as immature, non-functional or unproductive members of society, which are stigmas that are also frequently attached to asexual. There's someone in the chat who has been giving numerous examples um born born liberated empathetic world talking about for instance the ways in which having a friend life when you're in your 30s or when you're a grown adult out of college in the workplace becomes harder and harder in part because if you don't have a partner you sometimes don't even get invited because you're it's thought you'd bring a plus one. you're excluded because you don't want to be made the third wheel or they don't want to have somebody be a third wheel or there's a lot of things that they just refuse to to relate to you on or can't relate to you on. All these things are manifestations of people buying into this system, buying into society, right?
And buying into something that has been socially mandated on us in many different systems across generations.
Ultimately, even with this and Shanspear made a fantastic video essay about heterero pacimism and Sabrina Carpenter even when these relationships are ones that people will go to you and complain about you know it'll be men going to you talking about the old ball and chain right traditionally or women you know >> and they b sorry and they bond over it like that's a really big point like uh misogyny in this case even to a person that you >> out of your own valition have tethered yourself too. Um, it's a pastime. It's a male pastime, you know, like how many shows the predication the the the premise of it is Mike Huntwife, you know, like like you know, waiting for her to die, like you know, I can't wait for you to it. It's it's really um a bonding practice. And you know who the target audience for that for is because there's a guy there's a guy out there's a prototype of a guy out there um that his whole personality and his union with other men is the shared misogyny of um degrading women. So they commiserate over their wives and that's how they get closer to one another. Uh, and it's a very sad thing cuz now you see how that works across not only um uh not only just white folks do it, but but in other races they do this as well. Um, and you hear it in hip-hop because like that's the way that they describe women often times is very degrading, very violent at sometimes. Uh, even when they're trying to be passionate about them that, you know, I'm I'm cracking this one, I'm hitting this one, I'm I'm I'm pushing dick up in a belly. Like I'm just like, "All right, like you sound like Jack the Ripper. You you sound like you're stabbing up GM." Like, and literally they make bars about stabbing the GM, you know. Um even in our culture, like the way how we um make songs and dance all and like in um reggaon and and um Dembea, sorry. Um I mean our dancers, while mind you, that's culture at the same time. We are we call it juk, you know. We we say you're juking. Yeah.
Yeah. Um or like uh you all more so are familiar with Jamaicans saying um what word do they say? We say chook but they say dagger, right?
>> Dagger is a blade. The jook is the action of stabbing. We say if I jerk you like I'm stabbing you. The ways in which we born with one another and our culture is deeply invested in this shared hatred of um of women. So even to add that to um the attack on single folk, we would be remiss to also note that if there is an attack on single folk, a very it's a targeted heatseeker missile specifically towards women and fem presenting folks.
>> Everybody else is kind of a casualty of war. Uh but specifically single women and fems is almost blasphemous in particular cultures. to be unattended to as a single woman or fem in certain cultures could get you persecuted and that's that's an important part um >> because to be a man like I could still have an identity um if I'm single uh to an extent like I >> like there's there's categories that you can get put oh he's a yes you know he's a he's a ladies man you know like >> but that but that that aduces to my perceived masculinity in a in a misogynist world so like in a ciset binary I get to have I get to have this um identity uh and my wife doesn't for instance in fact like it would be seen as uh being unmotherly to seek an identity outside of her child or outside of her home like why are you always outside? Ain't you got a ain't you got a man? What you what you doing outside?
That happens.
>> Yeah, >> that's a conversation. Like a random stranger could use that as a way to also get access to a woman going and say you ain't got no man. Why you around here just walking about looking just this fine and all this other [ __ ] >> right?
>> What if you just wanted to be outside, but you can't because like that is a commentary. To be single outside is to be dangerous. That means you're unattended and therefore someone else can seek to attend to you, >> which would then be your fault because why are you alone?
>> Exactly.
>> And this is so this is a great undercurrent to talk about too this kind of hetereroessimist and then how that intertwines with female or pink pill, right? Whether it's Sabrina Carpenter's whole album being about like, "Oh, man, they treat me badly, but man's best friend." You know, how men, oh, if only you could communicate. Wow. You know, like, while also still having this emphasis on like, I got I'm just trying to find the one. Like, I want to find my man. I just wish men were not so terrible, but I want to find one. It's like, okay, what's the logic there? Or this is where I'm about to unleash I'm about to unleash a demon. Okay, >> I'm about to unleash something, a take into this world that now once I do it, I don't know if we can go back. But like when it came to the Megan the Stallion thing, >> I was waiting for that.
>> A lot of the conversation was very understandably, especially knowing what Megan has gone through about, you know, first of all, like how could Klay Thompson do that? [ __ ] on Klay Thompson. I'm very pro [ __ ] on Klay Thompson, right?
>> As a Bahamian myself, I am also pro- [ __ ] on Klay Thompson at times. And I am very I've been a fan of Megan's music. I think she seems like a wonderful person. I've actually met technically Megan the Stallion once at a meet and greet.
>> She seems like a wonderful person, right? I don't know if I was the only person. So you guys tell me, was I the only person when she was starting to post pictures with Klay Thompson and talk about how happy she was with him and putting out a song that was about my man, my man, my baby, my baby, my baby.
Was I the only person to be like, Klay Thompson? are we what are we what what's going on here? And it it took very simple Google searches to figure out Klay Thompson has been a serial cheater up until meeting Megan the Stallion.
He's also a rich and famous basketball player. Not exactly the archetype that you wouldn't associate with that kind of behavior and they were dating for a short period of time and then they started moving in together and Megan Stallion's rebranding is like I'm in a relationship and I'm happy and I want to share this with the world. And I'm not saying there's something morally wrong about that, but I'm also saying that there is something to this kind of romantic compulsion that misleads women or like pressures women into being in relationships with men despite the fact that they have clocked already all these negative things about the patriarchy and about men and about romance itself and despite the fact that they might be the first person to tell you you got to love yourself. But then at the same time, there's so much glory to the idea of finding the man and domesticating the man that I do think is worthy of having a conversation if people were able to have it in a responsible way that doesn't demonize Megan the Stallion or they talk about her bringing it upon herself. Does that make sense?
>> So there is this brand of Pikmiism, not to call Megan a Pikmi, but there's this brand of pickmeism where you feel like you're the exception to the rule because of your desiraability. So there are different lies that we tell ourselves to justify the reality that we want in we can very well see a pattern a history and ignore that and we can justify the reasons to course correct in a way that still ends up with what we have. So that could be true. And I think that folks that are trying to make the conclusion because I seen Charleston White say something to the effect of not only Charles White but DJ Cade Academics wasn't who's regrettably Jamaican say that he should have seen that Megan should have seen this coming uh because of these different intersections. You know, athletes are notorious uh infidelities in infid athletes are notorious for being infidel um for infidelity. uh you know, rappers the same way. But it's very interesting to put the onus on the cheated on to perceive they're cheating because it kind of takes away from the accountability towards the cheater.
>> Mhm.
>> I also saw one of the points that I've made is that why people had such a parasocial pain in seeing Megan cheated on at this on scale. Um, it's not that they saw theelves in Megan, but more importantly that they didn't see theelves in Megan. And that's why it was so scary to a lot of different women who felt as though, damn, if he could do that to Megan, then what is preventing my partner from cheating on me? Uh, same way with Beyonce. When Jay-Z, when it was revealed that Jay-Z had cheated on Beyonce, they were just like, "You cheat on Beyonce."
>> Right? There's so much emphasis on that as if >> status ability. A man doesn't, you know, a person doesn't cheat because there's something wrong with their partner.
>> They the the character of the cheetah is the reason for the cheating, >> right? Because that's the thing. And like somebody just pointed out in the chat, love Sierra Anastasia. It reveals the lie that women can prevent a man cheating. There's a lot of emphasis on like I'm going to look as good as XYZ and I'm going to act this good and Megan can cook and Megan can dance and Megan has money. I can be all of these things.
And we should try to be all these things as you know women in patriarchy right this this this idea. So when Klay Thompson then cheats on her there's something that happens viscerally in people where it's like a panic because it's like wait my values are a little bit threatened because this was the idea. She was supposed to be embodying the ideal that I'm chasing after and yet she's suffering from the same things that I've suffered from and she does and like now where do we go from that?
Right? And that's the thing. It's not about Megan having fault in the situation or about Megan having some sort of moral failure. It's about us not having the the the the range to have a conversation about cheating without ultimately reinforcing patriarchal ideas of how to date, how to look, and what it means to succeed in life, right? And because of that, we end up in these traps over and over again, which that's kind of part of life, too, right? We are trying to change the system. We understand the problems, but we're always going to make mistakes.
We're always going to end up in bad and difficult situations that are not our fault. And vice versa, right? At the same time, how do we respond whenever there's a cheating scandal? We think we're doing the big thing. We think we're dunking on the man and we're showing him and we're actually going at the patriarchy in some way by clowning a man. But in actuality, in some ways, we're reperpetuating the very ideas that makes this man the way that the man is.
The idea that a woman like Megan the Stallion in that position with the attributes that she's been assigned, she's got to be the uh, you know, the ideal for how you're supposed to be. And the idea that a man like Klay Thompson put himself in that position because he is embodying what a man's supposed to be and then he just messed up somehow. Oh, what happened? As if all of this doesn't happen. You know, Klay Thompson doesn't get in this position in part because he's lived an entirely selfish life, raised in a Nepo baby situation, dedicating his entire life to a sport and being glazed endlessly for years and years and years of his life and given tons of millions of dollars because he is good at a sport. And all these social systems that encourage men to be lascivious, to be promiscuous, so to speak, and they make fun of men for being whipped. They emphasized what the idea of a baddie is and what the idea is of a perfect woman that you should have and also this idea that once you're in a relationship, you should know that you're in the right one because you just feel it and that completes your life and you experience his happiness. And so then Klay Thompson is the embodiment of everything. He's doing exactly what the system says he's supposed to do. He wasn't feeling that happiness that you the mythos was telling him because he is pursuing the capital. he is doing the the role and if he's not feeling that perfect happiness then he is entitled as a person in his position to cheat. So we can talk a big game about how bad of a person he is but we're really just playing another game wherein we're pretending to escue the system but we're actually just being individualist all over again and not questioning the system itself. Is this is this getting is this getting too much?
>> No, I get I get what you mean. I think infidelity is a blind spot for like quite a bit of different demographics.
And I think when I think clowning him is a norm of course uh a placebo to >> I'm not against clowning him by the way just to be fair. I have participated in it.
>> I made a whole video on it. So I mean like I can't I can't take the high horse now. But I do think it's a nostrum um to a placebo to numb the pain uh associated with it uh parasoccially and for the person themselves. It can seem like that. And I think that like a lot of the times like you hear about the get back uh that people that are cheated on get uh whether it be self-development or you know having a bunch of casual sex in order to numb it. All of those different things are nostrms. their placeos because it you have to go through it in order to get around it and to circumvent it because there's a healing that you need to get from cheating. But I think that you know there's also like some other niche drama in regards to the one streamer I forgot his name. He was a I think he's a Asian streamer. He was like a big part of the chat is going to tell me in a second. Um recently it was shown that he was a big it guy if there was ever a thing. Yeah. Sukuno is that?
Yeah. Sukuno. Yeah, big up yourself, Joan and Barbara. Everybody else basically um he was this big streamer uh that came up in the pandemic and he attracted a lot of streaming community and and women alge uh because he performed this kind of docile.
I if I'm doing this right, I don't know if I'm doing it right, but um he he kind of played this uh inept guy in the dating world uh role all for him to be revealed to have having have have been having numerous uh girlfriends all around the world. Um and he was not inept at dating. He was actually very sophisticated and he was engineering a fantasy for the women that he was dating. uh and he was puppeteering all of them around. And it actually is interesting to see both of these things happen around the same time because I think that happened about uh I want to say 3 weeks ago and then Megan happened uh about last week ago. And it goes to show that and this is happening across different races and um different niches.
And it shows that this is a human scenario and it shows just how far romantic capitalism and desiraability is a um stretches for and and how far it reaches. Um this isn't unique to Megan.
Nothing about Megan is uh exempt from desiraability politics uh and romantic capitalism as an industry. And desiraability won't save you. And I think that's like the really big part about all of this is that >> there's no and I mean desiraability in many different ways also like respectability is a form of desiraability, >> right? You know, because as as black folks, um black men specifically, we've always uh been told, you know, pull your pants up, uh get a low cut, speak speak eloquently, and articulate. Uh if you wear this, if you do that, if you go to this school, if you go outside at just the right time, then maybe you could evade racism. And no, like you will still endure uh all of the systemic force of anti-blackness. um and racism. It doesn't matter how proper I speak, what I wear, what garments cover my body, it does not matter. Uh they are still going to ascribe animalistic features to you. And that also goes for misogyny. Um as a as a woman or fem, it does not matter if you have no sex with men and then you find your husband and then now you only have sex with him. And if you have sex with a bunch of Mandom and then you find a man and there's no right way to do this and you will still be slutshamed or called frigid depending on which configuration you choose.
So just live for you if if there's any advice to be gained for that. Um if you want to you know if you want to be sexually precarious and precocious and go about have it be safe. Um, but don't do it because you think that it's going to get you access to a particular type of person or get you at a higher tier on the shelf in the romantic capitalist grocery store cuz it's not. Um, right.
>> And if they was, they was just going to knock you down and someone was going to lick you up off the floor anyway.
>> Right. I think one of the great examples of this that goes under under clocked or under appreciated going back to the conversation about ace folks and a-romantic folks, right, is the ways in which people are stigmatized when they are ace and a-romantic and the characters and the ideas we have of somebody who doesn't have sex or who doesn't want to be with him, right? And there's great work on this uh in Cheronda J. Brown's book as well about the a-romantic villain. Uh, Brown talks about how in the Bond series in particular, there are villains that are constantly asexual. Okay, Rosa Cleb from Russia with Love. She's sadistic, cruel, and predatory. She oversees interrogation and torture of enemies.
Um, she has sexual encounters with men and women alike, but only to satisfy an itch and use them to their advant to her advantage. She cares not for genuine human connection only for amassing power and use that power to control and harm others. Right. Then there's a character named Grant in the same book was explicitly described as a narcissist and asexual whose tolerance of pain is high.
Okay? And he's an asexual serial killer, right? That is described as having these very typical serial killer experiences that are connected with how abnormal he is. Um as well as far as also him not having any interest in women sexually.
And then there's Orura Goldfinger, very famous v villain, you know, um who also is presented as being asexual, has no sexual interest in other people. Um Joe Masterson tells Bond that Goldfinger loves gold. Really loves it like people love jewels or stamps or women. Then you have another example. Ernst Stavro Bloomfield Bloomfeld from Thunderball never been known to this is constant in these books right um Bond is told by by this one particular villain Amelia Largo Vargas does not drink does not spoke does not make love. What do you do Vargas? Every man has his passion. Or there's the example of Dexter. Dexter Morgan from the Dexter television series. I don't know if you've seen it.
Um, he's a serial killer who targets other serial killers, and he lacks understanding of human emotion, connection, and intimacy. The closest person to him is his adopted sister, who he says he's merely fond of. He's indifferent towards sex and romance, entering into a relationship only to maintain a public image of appearing to be normal. As the show progresses and he becomes more human, then he enters into sexual and romantic relationships because he feels drawn to the women.
Okay? So he normalizes and he as he normalizes more and more oh now he's starting to have relationships with with women and like actually connecting with them and wanting them not like not just for like show. So all of this is actually very normalized and and relates to the same way in which if you were to tell somebody hey I'm asexual they might respond with like oh you know okay you know especially folks of the older generation might be like what's wrong with you? And there's also, as we talked about in the last video, a long history of the medical profession, specifically pathizing asexuality as there must be a chemical imbalance, there must be biologically something wrong with your brain, etc. >> There's a there's a creator by the name of the where he kicked a woman out uh because he found out that she was asexual. If I could summarize it, cuz I think it does speak I think it does speak to what you're talking about. um and maybe even bring up like a different uh aspect of it. uh he invited these women uh to play a game I guess uh you know pop the balloon is like an example of romantic capitalism also um a very big example uh where he brought these ladies on stream and then one of the ladies say that they're asexual >> and they bumble around like what exactly that means and one of them basically means that oh that mean she don't [ __ ] which mind you not true >> not even necessarily true >> like not not necessarily true. Um, ace folk, a folk like can very well still uh have sex. And then I think it's I'm I'm not sure if it's Jay-Z or the Shay. Uh, but the guys then kick uh the asexual person out. And I think that the subtext of that, even if it's done for theater, is still extremely interesting because the premise then therefore is if you're not if you're not on the table for sexual conquest, then you have no business here. um as as a woman or a fem presenting person if you are here and you are not a opportunity for the conquest of flesh then you can leave there there's really nothing and I do think as much as we may clutch pearls at that as a thing that someone could very well think I do think a lot of people engage with the opposite gender um in a cis head binary this very way in fact you hear this most of the time when you know people make the take that oh uh I don't believe that men and women could truly be friends because like what are you actually friends for and the subtext is actually like the self like the self-report of that is that you purely see the opposite gender in a in a sexual manner as an opportunity for for conquest as an opportunity for sexual conquest. Because if you knew that people were fully articulated beings and sex is sex is but a facet of that, then you would realize that of course men and women could be um platonic friends. And not only that, but if you want to take it even, you know, into like the relationship anarchy aspect, which I think is another uh part of this that could be discussed, but y'all might even be able to I know some people might have um opinions on this, but like some people are mature enough to have sex with their friends. Um it shouldn't be that controversial of a take, but some people are mature enough to have sex with their friends and um the boundaries, if you choose to put them there, be respected. Um, if there's something afterwards where you get in a romantic relationship with someone else, in a monogous romantic relationship with someone else, it could be a scenario where you do have the maturity to navigate that. Um, I have I have a friend of mine uh who's in kind of like a situationship and she was asking me cuz she knows I'm woke and she was just like uh do you think that the in situationship she's she's in involved with a man uh that started out as a friends with benefits type of thing and it was mostly an understood sexual casual relationship and feelings seem to have been introduced but still to the point where they very much at the beginning outlined that they have the liberty to have sex with other people.
And then feelings got introduced, but still the guy is having sex sex with other people. She is not. Um, and she was just like, should I should I have a problem with the fact that he's able to have sex with other people and I and I don't want to, nor does he want me to.
And I said, well, how does it make you feel? You're muted, by the way. Yeah.
Yeah. And and yeah, we like went over this and we were going back and forth with this and she was like, you know, um he meets all my needs for the most part.
He's there when I, you know, want some dick. He's there when, you know, I want to talk. Uh we're very we enjoy each other's time. Uh and the fact that he has another partner does not mean that it infringes upon our relationship and our uh ability to enjoy each other. Um, and I'm able to fulfill the other things in my life that I want because I, you know, my romantic needs are only so much, but I have other needs that I want. You know, I want a career. And I mean, like, I don't I feel, you know, to to be to be fair, I feel like she doesn't necessarily um she has a lot of interests outside of her romantic partnerships >> that allow for her to want something else outside of it. And she's just like, "But I feel like I'm not supposed to like this. I feel like I'm I'm supposed to have a problem with this because of society and and I can't have a scenario where um I agree the nor does it nor does he want me to that was a problem for me too because I was just like okay rules for thee not for me type of thing and I said like that if cuz that speaks to the autonomy and that means that he doesn't necessarily respect you as a fully autonomous being. Um >> right >> but she says that of course I don't really I don't really care to anyway. I said, "Yeah, but you should have the option to." Um, and we got into it over that. Uh, and I maintain and it's a very difficult place to be in when you're the friend and trying to tell like, >> "Yeah, the problem there, it seems to have emerged from the fact that it's like there's a desire for you to do some like there's a desire for me to control you." That's not >> that doesn't make sense. It's in a relationship, whether it's a friendship or romantic relationship, it's about like I want to have this. I want to have, you know, these are my boundaries.
this is what I am willing to have and what I'm not willing to have. Right? I can't list as one of my boundaries that I want you to stop thinking about having sex with other people. That's not a boundary. That's me trying to control your brain. Right?
>> Likewise, especially if it's I can have these feelings and I can pursue these feelings. I don't want you to. First of all, there's inequity. There's there's that's not this, you know. Yeah. Rules for me, not for thee. Also, what do you mean you want to control what I do? Like if that's why should that affect, you know what I mean? Like what you get out of this relationship, right? Obviously, everybody works out what they can work out and it's you can't tell a person ultimately what they want to do with their life because they won't listen to you anyway. Um, but a lot of this does still go back to things being normalized and things being seen as okay and things being ultimately acceptable on behalf of the fact that it falls in line with the idea of we're in a romantic relationship. We fit certain norms. I fit certain norms. You fit certain norms. Right? In certain cases with a situation like that, I'm fitting the norm as a man because I'm in a relationship, but also I'm pursuing my biological male urge to have sex with multiple people and you can't tie me down because I'm a man. Um, that's not real. You know, we often just don't sometimes when we get into these conversations about labels, even that can sometimes uh eskeew like a conversation about how creative people are and how people find creative ways to live their own lives and to deal with whatever has been put in front of them.
And on that note, it's like whether or not you call yourself something. Is it are you in an equitable situation? Are you being looked out for? Are you being respected for your own agency? Are you being respected for being able to exist in the world as you want to exist? And are those desires of what you want to do, how you want to exist in the world, are they based off of something that you haven't deconstructed? Are they based off of wanting to be successful? It's like, well, I, you know, even when it's like, I want a girl who's shorter than me, like by a lot, you know, and I want her to be uh, you know, >> freshly shaven, >> freshly shaven. I want her to have long hair. I want to have a certain hair type. I want her to make a certain amount of money. And that's just what I want. And you can't tell me why are you so mad about my desires? And it's like, I'm not mad, but like are you going to think for a second about where that comes from and why that might preference?
>> It's just a preference. You know, it's the dating preferences conversation again.
>> You only have dated short stacked goblins your whole life. Do you want to finally admit that you might have more than just a preference?
>> Right. I mean I mythological creatures aside regardless. Yeah. It's a matter of we sometimes have these desires and it's like we don't even want to take the second to think about where do these desires come from. Oh, I don't know. You know, and that's where the hetereroatalism heteropesimism comes in again, right? Oh, I just want to be with a man. Oh, I'm I'm condemned to wanting to be with a man to wanting to have a man who looks like Klay Thompson or who wants who looks like Chris Evans or who looks like XYZ and also makes XYZ amount of money and also has XYZ interests and talks a certain way and he has also heterosexual because I don't want to and I just that's just the way I am. And it's like no, you're you're not a thing.
You are a dialectic. You are a constantly changing uh combination of all the life force of the universe.
Okay? You're not just like a static object that exists one way in a vacuum.
>> It's not to say you have to change for anybody, but you're also just pretending that you're something that you're not, which is static. Um, and it gets it gets deep. I will say that this also connects really interestingly with this Tik Tok um, which is by a creator named St. Jenny. And this was one of the Tik Toks that kind of springboards this conversation for me getting into okay well what about what about if the ways that we think about romance don't actually make sense or don't make sense for a lot of people and for the people who it doesn't make sense to why is that the case and what's normal what's not normal and why does it matter >> I was talking to my therapist and I asked her what's the difference between platonic love and romantic love because I'm having a hard time understanding the difference between the two except that romantic love there's that physical attraction and intimacy but other than that like they're the same thing to me.
Obviously romantic love has that commitment but friendships could also have that commitment. When you go through a friendship breakup it's nearly as bad as going through a romantic breakup. I see them as like pretty similar to each other. And then she asked me the question, if I don't really see that much of a difference but the physical attraction in the intimacy, then how do I view physical intimacy?
And then I told her that I view intim physical intimacy like an activity like it's an activity that you do with someone. Like I view physical intimacy like if you were to go sparring for jiu-jitsu.
That's how I see physical intimacy. And then she told me, "Well, that's the thing though. You don't you see it like that, but you don't see it as an act of love. But I'm like, our generation doesn't really act like it's an act of love. This is things that you see on TV or like maybe from our parents, but like this generation right now does not view physical intimacy as an act of love.
Romantic love is a social construct. In our society, we view romantic love like it's the most important thing. And as a a little girl, you're taught that one day you are going to find the one and you're going to live this happily ever after to sell us this nuclear family and keep this machine going. But other than that, like I believe in love for sure.
Like I I believe in love. I believe in romantic love, but I I don't view it higher than friendship. I I see the love that I have for my romantic partner and my love that I have for my friends the same way. So, how do you guys view romantic love?
>> I think this really hit for a lot of people in our chat and I'm wondering how it hit for you and also what your your answer to to St. Jenny's question at the end would have been.
>> So, yeah, she she made a lot of like amazing amazing points in regards to the mythos that especially we indoctrinate young girls with where I mean it's from biblical times like women are made from the rib of man. There's this idea that you're not complete by yourself and you're from the onset of your life put on this Zeldaesque quest for restoration as you were born. And restoration is you finding a man that you can attach yourselves to. uh everything from Disney to Nickelodeon to your extra personal and interpersonal lives, you are reminded of the fact or this idea, this idea that you are supposed to be tethered to someone else. I mean, Beauty and the Beast, um every movie, uh especially animation, and keep in mind like the target audience for them very early on were young kids. You're being groomed, uh to be a partner to someone.
Um and in in that case alone like there's an attack on single folk. But yet again and I have to note that this is specifically the case uh for young girls and um over time women and fems like specifically the onus is placed on them to sacrifice their autonomy in order to be whole with in a heteronormative society a man. Uh and to not do that is sacrilege and you will incur social penalties. the world.
Again, going back to your point, the world is not designed for single people because just like houses in general, like to clean your own house, to cook at the same time, uh make sure that you're being a good person. Uh you're getting 8 hours of sleep, you're working to sustain yourself, uh you have hobbies hopefully, otherwise you're just, you know, waking up to go back to work and then going back to sleep again. Um all of these things cannot be achieved uh alone you know like and if you are a single person because everybody has this investment in their romantic relationships. As soon as you get into a romantic relationship or your friend gets in a romantic relationship, you lose a community member as a single person uh because they will then put you on the back burner in um in sacrifice of their own inter romantic relationship and you feel as though you're you're supposed to have that happen. Like you know there's this there's almost this um virtue in doing that in putting your relationship your romantic relationships first. And I've spoken to like a lot of um a lot of uh of my some of my female friends uh had this scenario where they without even telling me kind of withdrew uh after I got engaged and that's and that sucks, you know, because then you don't even have a choice in the matter.
But then they just say out of respect for um out of respect, you know, I kind of had to I cuz I didn't want them to feel any way. I was just like I wouldn't I I don't think that you're Wait, hold on. She got to be secure enough to like if I am if I have a friend a female friend and how is it that like you taking it you know but that is something that is a tacit rule a girl code if you will so a lot of the time there's supposed to be this like sacrificial um honor of um sapuku or how do you pronounce it I'm sorry sapuku >> sapuku like Japanese ritual suicide yeah >> yeah um bashidito type [ __ ] you know like What?
It's my analogy be all over the place.
That's >> No, it's okay. It's okay. It's okay.
Keep going.
>> So, yeah, like it's supposed to be like this last act of sapuku to your relationship with your friends once your friend gets in a relationship that's romantic. They say, "Okay, well, that's the end, and I need to bow out gracefully because I cannot access this person." Um, even if there was nothing romantic about it. And it's that really sucks. Um, so going back to what uh what was she was saying, um, we're looking for satisfaction, for fulfillment in places that are simply not going to have them.
>> A lot of the time, even men, I I feel this happens with a lot more than people don't realize, but a lot of men look for fulfillment, for healing, for restoration >> in sex. And oh man, it is a very painful thing especially for not only the man but um the partner as well in sex when a man just doesn't find it there and then they interpret that as this is just the wrong sex and you then have to go out looking for it elsewhere and what you looking for you ain't going to find it in between nobody legs >> like you're just not going to um >> it's in yourself. I mean this is like what love is. Love is something you can't find because you only find it in yourself. This is also a conversation that, you know, you can get there, you can get mystical with it, you can get spiritual with it. But I'll talk a little bit about my own story and then we can kind of close out. I'm in a committed long-term relationship. I mentioned my partner earlier. My partner is also co-orker, executive producer.
And I, you know, somebody in the chat mentioned experiencing limrance as part of this compulsion to be in relationships, right? Um, and I have a limited understanding of what limrance means. So, I'm just going to Google it really quickly before I say anything further.
>> Actually, let me refresh myself. Yeah, that's good.
>> Mental state of being madly in love or intensely infatuated when reciprocation of the feeling is uncertain. Oh, I Oh, yeah. I definitely had that. Um, and it was so interesting, you know, you know, I always sexed myself and um, sexuality myself as in part it was reinforced by this like since I was in first grade experience of like, oh, I'm obsessed with this girl. Oh, I'm thinking about this girl and she doesn't like me back.
She barely knows who I am. D I had that experience for so long. And when I started to in 2024 really reflect on my own sexuality and really reflect on some thoughts that I had that I didn't think were a big deal. Like, oh, you know, actually, I'm really not that attached to gender. Like, I'm a man, but like I really don't care that much about being a man or like my pronouns or things like that. And also like, oh, I think I may have experienced attraction to non-women, you know, to men, to all these things that I just kind of put in the background of my sichhat narrative.
and um being in community with and in relationships with queer people, which a lot of times that's who I was attracted to as I became more mature would be, you know, bisexual women. Um I would be like encouraged to go further in that. And the more that I did that, the more that it kind of became clear to me that that limrance that I was experiencing was not with a person, but with the idea of what my life would be like if that person liked and in particular of what acceptance and what space in society I could take up. Because if this girl likes me, you know, look at her and look at her friends and look at how what kind of life she has and the way that she thinks and she's so cool and I would genuinely want to be friends with her, too. So that must mean certain things about me. It must mean that I'm masculine enough, right? So that that must mean that I fit the standard of what it means to be, you know, a man.
And if I fit that, then I don't have to worry about getting beat up as much and I can probably make more money. And also, it's it's never rational. It's never just one specific thing. It's just an idea of happiness. It's just a stage, a place in which you will you picture yourself inhabiting and you think to yourself, that's where happiness is.
That's where I'm going to be. And that stage is always shaped like capitalism.
It's always shaped like patriarchy. It's always shaped like racism, right? It's always shaped in the way you've been socially conditioned and based off of the epigenetic trauma you've inherited from your parents, right? All these kinds of things, these factors that make you who you are and the environment what you what the environment is and makes both of those things intertwine creates this idea in your head of something you have to pursue in order to be happy, in order to get where you are uh or in order to get where you you want to be which you can't name. And then we've all had those experiences in life where you get the thing that you want and whoa, I have the thing that I want and it's like but why do I feel exactly the same?
Well, clearly there must be something wrong with my partner. Clearly there must be something wrong with me. clearly there must be something wrong with the school that I'm going to, the job that I'm going to, the place that I'm in, the thing that I look like, and not the fact that I was chasing a destination in the first place. And so this can sometimes be looked at as, you know, basic self-love, self-help kind of rhetoric, but it's it's core to understanding Marxism as well and core to understanding like listen, it's core to understanding revolution and liberation as well because for one, you're not a slave to your own desires. Your desires are not even fixed real things. They're just a dialectic that you're having with your own unhappiness. They're a conversation that you're having with your own lived experience. And because of that, you're always looking for the external. And what the external is telling you is always going to be whoever can pay to get that ex, you know, whoever can pay for that billboard, right? Whoever can pay for that, whatever the the hot thing is, whatever the socially conditioned thing is. And so I see so many times, right, even just in general and leftist spaces or whatever, when we talk about like failures of leftists or failures of people who are in this in these spaces, you see sometimes that the same systems will reiterate will reify themselves and people who think that they're liberated or think that they're revolutionaries.
It's like I'm yeah, I'm a leftist. I'm XYZ. But then you find out like they have specific, you know, phobias, specific bigotries, or they're living, you know, if you get deeper, specific lifestyles that aren't really in accordance with the values that they that they're supposed to be, you know, espousing or supposed to be trying to to deconstruct. So when it comes to that, there's just no way that you can have a conversation about like relationships if you're for one still desiring. you're still wanting, wanting, wanting, wanting. It's always going to hold you back because you're going to hold what you want in tension with your ability to actually think about who you are or like actually think about how things are. Um, you're going to want attention from women. So, your ability to understand the patriarchy is always going to suck cuz you want women to like you. You're going to want people to think that you're cool. So, your ability to go against the grain and wear a mask in public or or or or you know, say something, you know, change the way that you talk to not offend certain specific groups or not buy specific brands because you're boycotting. You're going to go on Twitter, no, I don't think I think you guys are just judging. You know what I mean? Because you want to still be cool. All this stuff holds us back and it's also quite normal. So, it's hard to like judge a person. But if we leave those things unexamined, not only is that hurting our ability to recreate society and to build the better world because we're not committing fully to that vision, it's also hurting our ability to grow. Because if I never had to took the time to be like, you know what, I got to talk about queerness. I got to think about queerness. I got to think about patriarchy. I got to challenge myself with these things. I would never have thought about what my experience with my crushes when I was in first grade was. So, I'm not really even going to understand myself. Um, so that's my big rant about that and I don't know what do you feel like you've had a similar experience?
>> No, that was that was healing for like a lot of different things and food for thought for a lot of different things as well, right? And I mean Chad Chad also agrees. Um, it's it is great to see like all these different representations of love which kind of shows that it does exist um not just in the past or in some far-flung world but right here. I mean we have multitudes of different configurations of love. Um and I think love is a transformative and spiritual property that can >> be the thing that you pursue. Uh I'm not extremely religious but it's one of the things that keeps me grounded uh in love. Love and community are these are my God, you know, like the idea that I >> that's what God is.
>> Yeah. God is love. like I mean it is in the Bible and I think for me in my own romantic relationships um I have regularly found or I had to come to grips with the reality that what I'm looking for uh I can't make this person my end I should say I can't expect this person uh to be can't expect this person to fix me or to fulfill me um it's not fair to them I've found that a lot of the things that I desire. When you were talking about desire, like it made me actually think more about some Buddhist properties and just like all desires is suffering and you know to to extinguish desire.
>> Yeah, I'm a Buddhist. It's kind of Yeah, that's not too far from Yeah.
>> Like you have to follow the eight-fold path. And I'm like like Yeah. Like when you do when you do break it down um Yeah. to desire is to to yearn for something that you don't have. M >> and we want what we can't have >> the most. And when you think about that, like that's the root of everything.
Desiraability is the root of all things.
It's the same thing inside your video games. Uh if you had everything at the beginning of the game, you wouldn't play it. Um and that kind of perplexes me at the same time motivates me. And I think about the things that motivate me and especially like what you were saying in regards to how much of what I do is in performance for the acceptance of other people. And I don't feel badly about that. I mean, I'm positive like a lot of what I do um is definitely in service of other of other people. And I think that that's actually one of my uh I I read this uh specifically in a book about Tony Shay, the guy that made Zapos, uh who ultimately ended up passing away. Uh he had a lot of neurode divergence, but also um his story is really indicative of how uh tortuous a life we people we deem to be successful actually live. and he said that he's found that the most satisfaction and fulfillment that he's had in his life is pursuing the happiness of other people. And yeah, I I definitely feel that. I I've often felt that, but at the same time, I struggle with that because I then don't know if there's anything else that makes me happy. I mean, a lot of what I do, a lot of what I do on a regular basis is going through the motion. And I especially as you know like a progressive patriarch in this regard um I am very thankful that I am able to support my family. Um but then you do realize at the end of the day it's very difficult one to do that without resentment and it takes a lot of checking on a regular basis of myself uh not to become despotic and not to become tyrannical and to remember how I'm operating in this framework. Uh because again the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house and I can't progressive patriarch effect um ethically uh without falling down particular uh potholes. But also men that adorn this patriarch aesthetic often tell themselves that they're doing it for a particular reason. And I yeah I have my why. Like I mean especially after you know it's very it's very easy to invest in the idea that okay once you have a child like it it puts you on a guidance. Um >> and I get it because like it makes things very simple and you now have someone depending upon your life. So like now you have to be of service um in that >> I have a hot take about that related to that but you >> what do you think?
>> Um this is actually Nelly's's hot take the premise so you can't disagree with it.
>> Um >> I agree.
>> We stand Nelly >> because she's always right. Um, no, she's not always right, but she's she's always hitting things that I'm like, damn. Um, she says that we think, and I have a separate hot take, too, that's related to what I've kept on screen with Spacey AC. Okay, children. We think that, you know, the parent the parental motto is always, you'll understand when you have kids one day. Nothing can be greater than the love of a parent to a child, right? The mother's love for her child. She says it's the opposite. The child's love of the parent is the most powerful thing. children love their parents more than parents love their children. And I agree with her because with exceptions obviously nothing is 100% universal, right? But you're 20, you know, you get 25, 30, 35 years old and you're like, I want to have a kid in the world because I want to raise a child. I think that that's important. I want oftentimes what do people say? I want somebody that loves me unconditionally. It's very selfish and socialized reasons, right? And of course many people will love their child out of that despite that through that whatever the child is born in the world. The first thing the child sees is you.
Everything that you have in this world when you're born is fully rellyant upon the people holding you right there.
There's nothing. It's the universe.
Children's love is the universe. Right.
And so sometimes Yeah. Exactly what you're saying is is true. You know the child relies on you. You can't that that kind of drive. I think people are like that's that you don't understand until you're in it when you know that a person's 100% reliant on you. But I would also categorize that as love. And I think that that also goes to show why so and you've talked about this on your stream. Why in so many cases children are constantly taking up for their parents or not severing relationships with their parents or not cutting off their parents, making excuses for their parents, following their parents. My mom is my mom is flawed but my mom beat me butt. My dad beat me butt but he did it cuz he loved me but he does all this stuff. But if a child at 12 years old puts makeup on and he's the wrong gender, get out of my house.
>> The child doesn't have the capacity and will when has the capacity will still funnel love to the parent. So I think Nelly's's hot take is really important there and also speaks about love in this way that you're you're getting at in a really beautiful way. It's not something hierarchical. It it's fundamentally anti-hirical because it is universal. It is life itself. And so why does a child love the parent more or you know generally speaking love the parent more?
Because the parent is life itself. You you don't have life if you don't have your parent. So I want you to continue.
But that was my >> no that I think that that is I mean it's very difficult to continue after this because now I'm all thinking about is I have to go and get back to my son. But >> Right. Right.
>> He loves you.
>> He and he does. And I mean there's there's a very brief period and and again I do want to preface this with like folks that are um that choose to be or are just child-free. Um, I absolutely and utterly respect that right and I understand it and it's a it's a qualm that I grapple with on a regular basis the more that we live in a morabun world that uh even though is the best time to be alive uh doesn't really say much about being alive uh but at the same time um and and also having children is a very selfish endeavor and I think it's important that we note that it is selfish on the parts of the parents I mean like they did not ask to be here >> um they didn't ask to be Yeah, >> they did not. And that's why I think that like you have uh it's upon it's incumbent upon you as a parent to to do your best to give the child the best life that you can. Um what was I going to say? So it's important. It's it's uh there's a brief period in a in a child's life that I get the privilege of being in right now where they do think that you're a superhero. Um and it definitely seems that way. And I mean to see a child glow up uh in a way where you know it's it's genuine, it's authentic because they haven't endured the socialization to the extent where the world has robbed them of that light and and made them jaded. So when they see you and they genuinely can still believe in magic, you are magical to them. And it is an amazing feeling to feel magical to someone else. um to to be seen and to have someone be sanguin uh because they're seeing you. So when I walk in the door and then my son sees me and he's just like his his face is is is eclipsed with a smile uh that yeah man that'll do it. That's good. I can live with that for the most part. But at the same time, what I was getting back to in regards to the benevolent patriarch is a lot of the time men end up priding themselves in their ability to provide.
Uh, and that's it. Because like we've been taught that that's our that's our ministry. That's the only thing that we're good for. And there's a resurgence to make sure that we go back to that. I say I remember when men used to go to war and build houses, fix cars, and all this other stuff. It's work. Like you are valuable when you are working. uh the self-actualization part of you uh is repudiated um by society. Anything that is about you um is deemed uh zesty and sassy and why are you so much involving um involving yourself and preoccupied about yourself? It needs to be about everybody else. And I struggle with the idea that like I do derive a great deal of pleasure again from pursuing the happiness of others. But I then try to remember that I've also been socialized to to do that anyway. So, what do I like? And I couldn't tell you half the time.
>> I really did. I like food. I have to make I have to set aside time to play video games um when not playing video games on stream. Um a lot of the time what I've been enjoying most of is is silence and rest and reading.
>> Oh yeah.
>> And that's Oh yeah.
>> And that's kind of scary to me because, you know, I think that I'm very much we we perform, you know, even if we're not performing, we perform. So I feel like we're on a lot of the time. Um, and because like we're not celebrities, being on is being us. So that line blurs quite a bit. You know, I'm not an actor in a role right now that everybody knows me for. So nobody's going to ask me, "Hey, do the thing." No, they're going to ask you me to just be me. And in fact, they're going to expect that I'm just being me. So I'm always on. Um, so when I'm when I retreat, when I when I take I'm a I'm an Aries um, born liberated, whatever that means. when I retreat into myself and I and I disrobe and I you know walk around because it's hot chilling like and eating food crumbs adorning my chest and watching Twin Peaks for the 20th time. That being my desire seems really interesting when everything you've been taught is to make as much utility out of the time that you have because your time is limited. Yeah.
Um it's very interesting that like despite my time being limited, I really want to relax.
>> Yeah.
>> And read. And it seems like that is uh luxury when really uh it's required. Not only required, but it seems revolutionary, which is sad. Uh because it's it's something that you need. Um but yeah, that is >> that's enough for me.
>> No, I mean that first of all, thank you um for sharing all of that. And you know, we should wrap up. I I do want you to to hug your child.
>> It would be very ironic for me saying all of that.
>> Be like, I ain't trying to deal with you. Um >> thing is he's watch he's probably going to watch with Rachel and he's not going to care at all that I'm here, but that's fine.
>> Hey, he's got good taste, but you know, his father's pretty great YouTuber as well. Um >> man, get out of here. We're going to do the the toxic positive masculine thing of, bro, I'm trying to get like you.
>> Bro, I'm trying to get like you, man.
I'm trying to Yeah. I I find that our journeys oftentimes somebody you know spacy AC in the chat made this comment about like the importance of the spiritual journey for the person themselves. We have it backwards I think you know we do religion in the society as a socialized thing and then we do our politics as like an individual idea thing and it should be the opposite. Our religion in our spirituality should come from our own individual contemplation.
We should be able to read the texts and think about them and then meditate and spend time with the universe alone in order to really get that sense, not just be told it or hit over the head with the Bible, right? And then likewise, we often get our politics from sitting around and reading a book and reading a book and reading a book and going online and seeing people talk and seeing seeing a social media post and seeing XYZ. No, your politics is supposed to be connected to what's going on right there like with the guys out in the group over there with the homeless folks in your local park. And I think that that is what what what gets you to trying to have a more loving life. I mean, that's what this conversation, as much as it's been all over the place, has been about.
It's about having love and it's about what love is, you know. Um, we've talked about love is God. Love is life. Love is all these things. Um, but what one thing love isn't is, you know, um, one thing love isn't is lirance. One thing love is isn't is desiraability. One thing love isn't is you having a romantic partner.
it just won't give you that. And I really appreciate a romantic and asexual theory for helping put to words what this is because it allows us to have dimensions of this conversation that are usually harder to access when we're just talking about man people are so mean, you know, or people are so mean to single people or all of that. So, and I appreciate having you on. I'm going to stay on because I'm going to do a special segment with the chat, but I'm going to let you go in order to live an actual human life >> and eat cuz I've been I've been, you know, fasting this entire time, which I don't always recommend.
>> That's not >> signing off. Big up to Sang Lan.
Appreciate the fraud land that came true. You all enjoy the Sang stream. I will see you all later.
>> Yeah. Thank you. Peace out foreign.
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